A New Beginning…

A lot has changed since I last posted anything on this blog.

I think I mentioned in my last update that my husband got a new job. He started it about three weeks ago (maybe four?) and the increase in income and benefits has been a huge blessing. The first week was a bit hard for him though. His new job is on second shift, so to go from working 9 to 5 to 3 to 11 was a bit of a shock. For awhile there he felt like he was being a horrible dad because he wasn’t home to put our son to bed like he had been doing for the past year. He also worried that he was putting more stress on me since he wasn’t home to help out with chores. I reassured him that it was just a temporary thing – in a year or two, once he had some seniority, he could probably switch to days once an opening became available, maybe even sooner if they approved his transfer to a welding spot – and eventually we all adjusted to his new schedule.

Then came the big shocker. My husband and I had been planning on getting our own place again for several months, but each of our attempts to buy a house had fallen through. We had decided that we would go back to renting instead, when all of a sudden this mobile home popped up on Redfin. I know mobile homes and mobile home parks come with a certain stigma, but nowadays they’re really quite nice. This mobile home was a bit older, but it had been taken care of, and it was in a really nice park. A park that was bit further out of the way than we had been expecting, but still really nice.

So, after viewing it, and being approved by the park, we put in an offer. The next day the owner accepted it. Two weeks after that escrow closed and we were the owners of our first home.
The only problem with our new place is that it was too far away from my in-laws for them to baby sit our son while we were at work. My family has too many medical issues to watch him every day, and daycare simply isn’t an option with our son’s ongoing health issues. They’re improving, he can drink water in small doses now, but he’s still a bit more hands on than your average kid. So I asked work if I could come in earlier, or work part time hours.

And then came the really BIG surprise. Two weeks after putting in my request, my manager escorted me down to HR for a meeting. In my experience, meetings with HR are never a good thing. To my surprise, this one actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Basically, my job was doing away with my position. Since the new system had been launched, they no longer had a need for me or for my coworker.

The ultimate dream was always for me to be a stay at home mom, but I never actually thought that it would happen. Especially considering how expensive the cost of living in Southern California can be. Yet, here I am.

It’s mind boggling.

The boyo is already benefiting from the attention and our new home. He had started to take one or two steps at our old place, but now he’s full on walking, and every day he gets better and stronger and is able to go farther than before. He’s also babbling more and I don’t think it’ll be long before he says his first word. He’s also getting in to way more trouble than ever before; his new favorite pastime is to try to climb into the tub (since our new home is an older mobile home, the tub isn’t very deep, but still) or he likes to push the buttons on the dryer and start it and stop it and start it and stop it and so on and so forth.

When he does sleep, I do house work or I try to write. I confess I’ve been too distracted by unpacking or Netflix to write much (I can now watch Orange is the New Black, or Marco Polo without fear of my inlaws walking in and interrupting). However, I have made progress on two projects that will be published under pseudonyms (due to their adult nature) and I’ve been playing around with the stories I already published under one fake name to see if putting things up for free really makes a difference on sales. So far, it hasn’t for that one pseudonym. Neither has making stories exclusive to Kindle Unlimited or whatever that program is called, but then, we’ve been so busy with the move it’s been hard to promote those things. Now that we’re a bit more settled in, and I have time to do other stuff, maybe that will change.

As long as I don’t get distracted by Netflix that is.

Today is WIPpet Wednesday. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s a weekly blog hop run by KL Schwengel where authors share snippets of their works in progress. The only rule is that the snippet must somehow relate to the date.

This bit is from The Descendants and it comes shortly after the last snippet I shared. I admit, I’m too tired to do math at the moment, so I’ll figure out some equation for this snippet later!

Rather than continuing the conversation, she stared straight ahead only to find the woman with the leather collar glaring at her. She walked along behind the cart, her arms tied together in front of her and linked to it by a long length of rope. 

“She seems to think that we will become her owners new favorites.” Tesni explained. 

Vivian wrinkled her nose. “Ew.”

“Thankfully we don’t need to be too concerned about them – they don’t want to damage the goods.

To read more WIPpet Wednesday posts, go here.